"Delve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Geology or Astronomy but this strikes me. And when we think that Man must go on to discover in the same plodding way, one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as well fold his hands, or turn them to dig and delve, considering how soon the march of discovery will distance all his imaginations, [and] dissolve the language in which they are uttered. Martial, as you say, lives now, after two thousand years; a space that seems long to us whose lives are so brief; but a moment, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... company, we have fresh confirmation of an old truth—that the boundary lines which mark off one field of science from another are purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Even the briefest glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound debt to the new theories as to the bonding of atoms to form ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... intend to delve, grub, shuck corn, split rails, and the like always," he told Mrs. Crawford after he had finished reading the "Life of Washington." "I'm going to fit myself ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... of repair I know not—it was sold at an advance equal to a yearly increase of but six-sevenths of one per cent, on the purchase price of the gaping ruin sold in 1837. There is a certain poetry in notarial records. But we will not delve for it now. Idle talk of strange sights and sounds crowded out of notice any true history the house may have had in those twenty-five years, or until war had destroyed that slavery to whose horridest possibilities the gloomy pile, even when restored and renovated, stood a ghost-ridden ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... his last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair "I have builded ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... agricultural industry. We may even stop a moment longer to hear his stately appeal to France, which, heeded by her, would have made Lescarbot's a name familiar in the homes of America instead of one known only to those who delve in libraries: ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... pilfering. That women had been taxed to build colleges to educate men, and if we could pick up a literary crumb that had fallen from their feasts, we surely had a right to it. Moreover, I told him that man's duty in the world was to work, to dig and delve for jewels, real and ideal, and lay them at woman's feet, for her to use as she might see fit; that he should feel highly complimented, instead of complaining, that he had written something I thought worth using. He answered like the nobleman ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the subject which we have propounded, and we shall best reach it by considering some aspects of the social condition of ancient Greece. The lessons to be learned from that wonderful country are not yet exhausted Each time that we return to that richest of historic mines, and delve faithfully and carefully, we shall be sure to dig up some ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... her and said with grave intensity, "How, dear, are the great truths of science to be ascertained unless men—men and their wives—are willing to delve lovingly, to sacrifice comforts, and even endure hardships in ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... task to digging Gell? That mighty limner of a bird's-eye view, How like to Nature let his volumes tell; Who can with him the folio's limits swell With all the Author saw, or said he saw? Who can topographise or delve so well? No boaster he, nor impudent and raw, His pencil, pen, and shade, alike ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... however, is not adequate for that. Electricity and subways and motor cars do not restore the soul; and to know that there are millions upon millions of solar systems, like our own, scattered through space does not restore the soul; and to delve in the sea or to fly in the air or to fling our words through the ether does not restore the soul. The need of religion is perennial and would be though our scientific control over life were extended ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... manuscript) in a seat and go into another car, when you come back the goods may be there and they may not. That is the only way to keep money—fasten your eye right on it. If you leave it in the hands of others, and go away to delve in books, the probabilities are that, when you get back, certain obese attorneys have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... ever thought of the fact that when the barons at Runnymede laid the foundations of democratic government for the world they overlooked the almost equally important matter of creating a democratic system of finance. Well—let's not delve into that now. The point is that under our present system we do acquire wealth which we do not earn, and the only thing to be done for the time being is to treat that wealth as a trust to be managed for the benefit of humanity. That ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... man spoke up, "I hadn't said a word about makin' 'em fight. Hawes, these women folks don't want a man to have no fun at all. As long as a man is at work it's all right with the women; they can stand to see him delve till he drops, but the minit he wants to have a little fun, why, they begin to mowl about it. Of course, I'm not goin' to let 'em fight on Sunday. But a preacher would eat one of 'em on Sunday. All days belong to 'em. It's die dog or ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... the iron; a thousand paths, marked with foot-prints, all inland leading, none villageward; and strown with traces, as of a flying host. On: over forest—hill, and dale—and lo! the golden region! After the glittering spoil, by strange river-margins, and beneath impending cliffs, thousands delve in quicksands; and, sudden, sink in graves of their own making: with gold dust mingling their own ashes. Still deeper, in more solid ground, other thousands slave; and pile their earth so high, they gasp for air, and die; their comrades mounting on them, and delving still, and dying—grave pile ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... What time the ruddy sun Smiles on the pleasant corn Thy singing is begun, Heartfelt and cheering over labourers' toil, Who chop in coppice wild and delve ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Three, four, Knock at the door; Five, six, Pick up sticks; Seven, eight, Lay them straight; Nine, ten, A good, fat hen; Eleven, twelve, Dig and delve; Thirteen, fourteen, Maids a-courting; Fifteen, sixteen, Maids in the kitchen; Seventeen, eighteen, Maids a-waiting; Nineteen, twenty, ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... testify. The edition of Champlain's works, by the Abbe Laverdiere for some years librarian of Laval, is a most creditable example of critical acumen and typographical skill. In the same field there is much yet to be explored by the zealous antiquarian who has the patience to delve among the accumulations of matter that are hidden in Canadian and European archives. This is a work, however, which can be best done by the State; and it is satisfactory to know that something has been attempted of late years in this direction ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... me," he said. "I don't know when I'll be back. I'm going to the laboratory and the university library. Be ready early in the morning to help me delve into this tunnel mystery." ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... save you trouble in store that I warn you to look where you stand, and see that you don't lose your heart before you know it. It's an awful thing for a woman, Miss Ivy, to get a notion after a man who hasn't got a notion after her. Men go out and work and delve and drive, and forget; but there a'n't much in darning stockings and making pillow-cases to take a woman's thought off her troubles, and sometimes they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... least boast of a bold art and literature which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... who ne'er those mystic transports felt, Of solitude and melancholy born? He needs not woo the Muse; he is her scorn. The sophist's rope of cobweb he shall twine; Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page; or mourn, And delve for life, in Mammon's dirty mine; Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... very likely to ask—Why does man till the fields? Why does man fell the forest trees? Why does he cultivate domestic animals? Why does he delve in the earth for minerals? These are all strenuous activities that require the outlay of time, talent and strength. We may say that they are sacrifices that he makes and, apparently, willingly. We have only to study the ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... Somehow, I haven't much confidence in that fellow. I think I'll wire the San Francisco office to look him up in Dun's and Bradstreet's. Folks up this way are taking too much for granted on that fellow's mere say— so, but I for one intend to delve for facts—particularly with regard to the N.C.O. bank-roll and Ogilvy's associates. I'd sleep a whole lot more soundly to-night if I knew the answer to ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... their emotions and their thoughts. The hero can tell us only what they said and did, how they looked in action and in speech, and what they seemed to him to think and feel. But he cannot enter their minds and delve among their motives. Furthermore, he cannot, without sacrificing naturalness of mood, analyze to any great extent his own mental processes. Consequently it is almost impossible to tell from the hero's point of view a story in which the main events are mental or subjective. We can hardly ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... we know that the Lycosa's fangs, those lethal weapons, are not afraid to bite into clay and gravel. They knead the excavated rubbish into pellets, take up the mass of earth and carry it outside. The rest follows naturally; it is the fangs that dig, delve and extract. How finely-tempered they must be, not to be blunted by this well-sinker's work and to do duty presently in the surgical operation ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men and women here to dig and delve; men and women there to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... would shrink from hiding there. Serpents and slimy lizards are the only denizens; sometimes the coon takes refuge in this desert from the hounds, and in the soil mud a thousand odorous muskrats delve, with now and then a tremorous otter. But not even the hunted negro dares to fathom the treacherous clay, nor make himself a fellow of the slimy reptiles which reign absolute in this terrible solitude. Here ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to do with it. Now, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... honest fellow would speak hopefully of a good day to come; but I poured cold water on that, and, pointing to my lute and my copy of "Plutarch's Lives," was wont to say that there was enough happiness there for my life without seeking to reopen the past or delve ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... now dive Into the unexplored deeps of me— Delve and bring up and give All that is submerged, encased, unfolded, ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... hands had helped to fashion the rude circlet-and that it was significant of the truth that he sought her not from the vantage ground of wealth, but because of a manly devotion that would lead him to delve in a mine or work in a shop for her, rather than live a life of luxury with any one else ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... wrought this sin! Our bodily sustenance for to win, Ye must delve and I shall spin, In care to ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... highly intelligent monsters can fully realize how desirable it is for all the various races of humanity to assist and support each other. In order that you may understand the situation, it is necessary that I delve at some length into ancient history, but we have ample time. In about ..." he broke off, realizing that the two races had no thought in common ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... student. Knowledge, which is after all but a string of facts, is being arranged, sorted, distilled, and set down in compact form, ready for rapid assimilation. There is little fear that the student who may wish in the future to become master of any subject will have to delve into the original sources in his search after ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... industrious, thrifty, hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives to delve ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... AND DELVE having had the honour to be commanded to make the necessary arrangements for the obsequies of the late Mr. PITT WELLINGTON, beg to say (on this memorandum) that they have not been fortunate enough to carry out the transaction ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... a good deal of farming and of farmers in Canada. Farming there is by no means a life of pleasure; but, if a young man goes into the Bush with a thorough determination to chop, to log, to plough, to dig, to delve, to make his own candles, kill his own hogs and sheep, attend to his horses and his oxen, and "bring in firing at requiring," and abstains from whiskey, it signifies very little whether he is gentle or simple, an honourable or a homespun, he will get on. Life in the Bush is, however, no joke, not ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... The White Horse guided by his favourite theory that to realise history we should not delve into the details of research but try only to see the big things—for it is those ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... above. Its crest was above timberline. On all sides rose lofty mountains, many of them patched with snowbanks. Deep canyons cut sharply between the ridges and shoulders. Ice fields indicated possible glaciers. I wanted to explore everything at once; wanted to climb the peaks, and delve into the canyons; hunt out the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... of the Florentine Republic at this time would be too deeply to delve into history, but it may briefly be said that by means of humiliating surrenders and much crafty diplomacy, Clement VII was able to bring about in 1529 peace between the Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... hard-working man should marry a woman tolerably saving and industrious. As the "almighty dollar" is now the great motor-wheel of humanity, and that to which most husbands devote their entire lives, to delve alone is ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... between his teeth, the memories of good evenings at Yale curling up in his smoke. And Tootles, thinking and thinking, sat, Puck-like, at his feet, with her warm shoulders against his knees. Not in her memory could she delve for pleasant things, not yet. Eh, but some day she might be among the lucky ones, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... agricultural country whose laborers, though poorly paid, either worked under mild conditions in the fields, or followed their trades in their cottages and workshops. The introduction of the steam engine brought with it a demand for fuel which forced thousands of men, women, and children to delve in the mines, and the use of machines and the adoption of the factory system shut up other thousands of both sexes, and all ages, to labor for excessive hours in crowded cities under unsanitary conditions. At the present time the system of legislation regarding the employment ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... suddenly called upon to labor from morning to night, to dig and delve, and to stand up to their hips in water washing the river sands. They were forced to change their habits and their food, and from free and, in their own way, happy masters of the soil they became the slaves of a handful of ruthless men from beyond the sea. When Ponce's order to distribute ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... into consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe that only positive self-deception conceals from us ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... Jane Withersteen and thought of the complications of the present amazed him with proof of how far he had drifted from his old life. He discovered that he hated to take up the broken threads, to delve into dark problems and difficulties. In this beautiful valley he had been living a beautiful dream. Tranquillity had come to him, and the joy of solitude, and interest in all the wild creatures and crannies of this incomparable ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... old professor observed Claudius evolved this idea years ago. Alfred had no idea of who Claudius was, or how long ago he lived. However, when he located him four hundred years back, the old professor said "Huh, four hundred years ago? H-ll! Four thousand years." Alfred did not delve into ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... giving way to a greater knowledge of law. The supernatural recedes into the background as we delve deeper into the supernormal. The unusual loses its miraculous element as we gain knowledge of the law whereby the thing is done. We are realising that no miracle has ever been performed in the world's ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... express clearly what thousands feel without the moral courage to utter it. The saddest part of it all is, the deeper we delve the less we are satisfied in our intellectual natures. We merely succeed in learning that we are the veriest pygmies. Men like Mr. Wynkoop are simply driven back upon faith as a last resort, absolutely baffled by an inpenetrable wall, against which they batter mentally ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... have a fairly good understanding of how they came to have the problem that they have. I have yet to encounter the person who protests he has no idea why he doesn't function as he would like to in a certain area. From a practical standpoint, not many have the time nor money required to delve into the unconscious background of the problem. The high cost of treatment is a very real objection and cannot be discounted lightly. People suffering from emotional problems usually suffer financial reverses as well. Who is to help these people? ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... talisman is industry, and out of their rocky soil they conjure riches in the shape of iron,—the best that can be found in all Transylvania. The same men that fill the church every Sunday, in holiday attire, dig and delve under ground the remaining six days of the week. Another secret of their modest wealth is their abstinence from strong drink. There is not a single grog-shop in Toroczko. But I fear I am ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... cool their boiling blood: when Summer suns Bake the cleft earth, to thick wide-waving fields Of corn full-grown, they lead their helpless young: But when autumnal torrents, and fierce rains Deluge the vale, in the dry crumbling bank Their forms they delve, and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... surface of the earth. But, whether it be by virtue of the Forrest laws, or other custome, the head Gaviler of the Forrest, or others deputed by him, provided they were born in the Hundred of St. Briavel's, may go into any man's grounds whatsoever, within the limitation of the Forrest, and dig or delve for ore and cinders without any molestation. There are two sorts of ore: the best ore is your brush ore, of a blewish colour, very ponderous and full of shining specks like grains of silver; this affordeth the greatest quantity of iron, but being melted alone produceth a mettal very short and brittle. ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... existence. Multitudes of necessity toil in the stithy and deep mine. Multitudes must accustom themselves to odors offensive to the nostril. Men toil from morning till night midst the din of machinery from which the ear revolts. Myriads dig and delve, and scorn their toil. He who spends all his years sliding pins into a paper, finds his growth in manhood threatened. Others are stranded midway in life. Recently the test exhibition of a machine was successful, and those present ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... happened as the law of triumphs enjoins, about which Dio Cocceianus writes. And if it seems to you an irksome thing to delve into books of ancient writers, at all events I will explain cursorily, as best I may, the entertainments pertaining to the triumph. They cause the celebrator of the triumph to ascend a car, smear his face with earth of Sinope or cinnabar (representing blood) to screen his blushes, fasten armlets ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... what induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between Dryden and Settle, Dennis and Addison, &c.; and which Sir WALTER SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... might delve; the Employers' Liability Act is a tricky business and I am only insured against my own death—which always seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... shore, and soft furs, and ivory tusks of the sea-beast, from the frozen coasts of the north. Never before was country so richly blessed; for Siegfried taught his people how to till the soil best, and how to delve far down into the earth for hidden treasures, and how to work skilfully in iron and bronze and all other metals, and how to make the winds and the waters, and even the thunderbolt, their thralls and helpful servants. And ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... he cry, "Delve, Delve the hole! And prune the tree, and trim the root! And stick the wig upon the pole, To scare ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... go to them," said Zell, almost fiercely. "I tell you there is no place for you here, unless you wish to go to perdition. Go home, where you are known. Scrub, delve, do anything rather than stay here. Your big brother can and will take care of you, though ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... precaution to bring with me my picket-pin—one of the essentials of the prairie traveller. It was the work of a moment to delve it into the bank. I needed not to drive it with violence: my well-trained steed never broke fastening, however slight. With him the stake was only required as a sign that he ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the Waybroad is prescribed for twenty-two diseases, one after another; and in another of the same date we are taught how to apply it: "If a man ache in half his head . . . delve up Waybroad without iron ere the rising of the sun, bind the roots about the head with Crosswort by a red fillet, soon he will be well." But the Plantain did not long sustain its high reputation, which even in Shakespeare's ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... he was soon busily engaged upon the outline of what was to be his masterpiece. Forgotten was everything else as he sat there, devoting all the energy of heart, mind, and hand to the work before him. The miners might delve for gold; Curly and his companions might gamble to their hearts' content; such things were nothing to him. He had struck a vein of wealth, the true gold of love, by the side of which all the treasures of earth ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... so much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... on the greensward. And it did his heart good to feel he was not alone, but that these merry little companions were with him, lightening his way and guiding his course all the night through. And he thought too of luckless dwarfs whom Odin had condemned to dig and delve all day deep in the ground, and throw fuel on the great central fire of the earth, but who at night, like the fairies, might come above and revisit then old haunts. And even these mischievous little companions helped to cheer the heart of the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... the man who had dropped into a good thing, "They all want to delve into the secrets of my mission here. You, of all men," he meaningly said, "cannot blame me for throwing the dust into their eyes. I detest this intrusion, and so in sheer self-defense I am going to give a formal dinner to a lot of these ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... must be counted the fostering of the musical ambitions of Arthur Foote, who was for two years the leader of the Glee Club of Harvard University. Though he has by no means been content to delve no deeper into music than glee-club depths, I think the training has been of value, and its peculiar character is patent in his works. He is especially fond of writing for men's voices, and is remarkably at home in ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... put the letter in a safe place, and curb his impatience. He felt that necessity for silent isolation and absolute solitude which a reader, anxious to delve into a new book, experiences. This bundle of papers doubtless contained for him the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... frame houses nestle upon diminutive farms; the wild beauty of shoal and eddy, bouldered channel and lake-like stretches of pool, rocky walls and timber-clad peaks, begins to charm the stranger and draw him on and on through scenery as attractive as grand toss of mountains and delve of river ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... girls leaping out to delve; One leaped into Cole's Book Arcade, And then there were ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber, Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city, Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas, Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure, Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat. ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... above me and around, In part still shrouded by the soil, A stony chaos strews the ground, Where patient students delve and toil To bring to light Time's buried spoil, And History's tangled ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the similar book suggested by his father had made him more or less familiar with some of the original sources. He now had to plunge into various legal antiquities, and to study, for example, the six folio volumes called Rotuli Parliamentorum; to delve in year-books and old reports and the crabbed treatises of ancient lawyers, and to consider the precise meaning and effect of perplexed and obsolete statutes. He was not an antiquary by nature, for an antiquary, I take it, is one who loves antiquity for its own sake, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... how can we account for the continuous struggle of mankind in certain directions? And, finally, what is it that makes it possible for men to rise beyond themselves, to shake away the shackles of matter and vicinity, and to delve deep into ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... centre of the space beneath the cover, flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... return. He is stronger now, but no less delicate; he loves not Nature less, but the world more. He has learned to love his fellow-men. Knut Pedersen, vagabond, wanders about the country with his tramp-companions, Grindhusen, the painter who can ditch and delve at a pinch, or Falkenberg, farm-labourer in harvest-time, and piano-tuner where pianos are. Here is brave comradeship, the sharing of adventures, the ready wit of jovial vagrants. The book is a harmless ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... many historical efforts, principally concerning England in different periods, his History of the Anglo-Saxons stands out prominently as a great work. He was an eccentric scholar, and an antiquarian, and he found just the place to delve in when he undertook that history. The style is not good—too epigrammatic and broken; but his research is great, his speculations bold, and his information concerning the numbers, manners, arts, learning, and other characters ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Unknown World.—But how different is the picture of primitive man suddenly brought face to face with an unknown world. With no knowledge of nature or art, with no theory or practice of social order, he began to dig and to delve for the preservation of life. Suffering the pangs of hunger, he obtained food; naked, he clothed himself; {8} buffeted by storm and wind and scorched by the penetrating rays of the sun, he built himself a shelter. As he gradually became skilled ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... deeper, let us toil, In the mines of knowledge; Nature's wealth, and learning's spoil, Win from school and college; Delve we then for richer gems Than ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the dusk of the Cathedral listening to the organ; walk, their heads in air, their arms folded behind their backs, straight up Orange Street as though they were scaling Heaven itself; stop little children, pat their heads, and give them pennies; stand outside Poole's bookshop and delve in the 2d. box for thumb-marked sermons; stand gazing in learned fashion at the great West Door, investigating the saints and apostles portrayed thereon; hurry in their best hats and coats along the Close to ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... he was not content with that narrow, one-sided aspect of life and human nature, to which his own individual personal experience, however varied, must necessarily limit him. He would see it under greater varieties, under all varieties of conditions. He would know the history of it; he would 'delve it to the root.' He would know how that particular form of it, which he found on the surface in his time, had come to be the thing he found it. He would know what it had been in other times, in the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... When there was none to explore Your winding labyrinths occult, None to delve your ore Of strange virtue, or do Your magical business, you Were there, never old nor new, Veined in the world and alive:— Before the Planets, Seven; ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... with thickets full of Croats; and such an amount of artillery,—I believe they have in battery no fewer than 1,500 cannon. A position very considerable indeed:—must have taken time to deliberate, delve and invest; but it is done. Near fifty miles of it: here, clear to your glass, has the head of Lacy visibly emerged on us, as if for survey of phenomena:—head of Lacy sure enough (body of him lying invisible in the heights, passes and points of vantage); ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... enough that's right good in him, He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities— To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. If you're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... when they land us, give us wherewith to occupy our thoughts. This is a treasure-island. Each man of us they land with a pick; the inhabitants tell us of the treasure, and, being acclimatised, we set to work to dig and delve. Some work in shafts already sunk, some seek to break new ground, but what the pick will next ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... made familiar, but, however familiar, we feel that we do not know one bit more about them than we did before. When I try to think of that sum of L2,000,000,000 there is a sort of vision passes before my mind's eye. I see your peasant labourer delve and plough, sow and reap, sweat beneath the summer's sun, or grow prematurely old before the winter's blast. I see your noble mechanic, with his manly countenance and his matchless skill, toiling at his bench or his forge. I see one of the workers in our factories in the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... apparently did to the commissioner. It would certainly have saved him a lot of work and trouble if he could believe the obvious as most people did. What was this devil that rode him and spurred him on to delve into the hidden facts concerning matters that seemed so simple on the surface? The devil that spurred him on to understand that there always was some hidden side to every case? Then the sigh and the smile passed, and Muller raised his head ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... who delight to delve among pedigrees, genealogies and family connections, may perhaps be a little disappointed to learn that, in spite of the odorous nature of the herbs, there are none whose history reveals a skeleton in the closet. They are all harmless. Now and then, to be sure, there occur records of ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... so full of dreary noises! O men, with wailing in your voices! O delve'd gold, the wailers heap! O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall! God strikes a silence through you all, And ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... frays in the Channel; the buxom wife of Bath; the broad-shouldered miller; the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, tapestry-maker, each in the livery of his craft; and last the honest ploughman who would dyke and delve for the poor without hire. It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought face to face not with characters or allegories or reminiscences of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct in temper and sentiment ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history from the cradle of the race to the latest proclamation; ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... conscience of Europe. It occurs in the chapter "De l'Homme": "We see certain wild animals, male and female, scattered over the fields, black, livid and scorched by the sun, fastened to the soil which they delve and stir with an invincible obstinacy; they have a sort of articulate speech, and when they stand up upon their feet, they show a countenance that is human: and in short they are human beings. They creep back at nightfall into dens, where they ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... what use is a man who dawdles away his time on a fiddle; of what benefit is he to mankind? Do fiddlers build cities? Do they delve into the earth for precious metals? Do they sow the seed and harvest the grain? No, no; they are drones—the ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... single foot from that point you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest—and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all—$500. Sometimes the nest contains $10,000, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... berries, and their color will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices into our insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and physical alterative that will so change us that we shall believe in evolution and imagine ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. One may delve in the earth so long as to lose all dread at the thought of sleeping in it at last; and the luscious fruits and bright-hued flowers that come out of it, in a way no one can find out, may teach our own resurrection more effectually than do ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... to delve into the past. The first connecting link seemed years ago,—he was running away from something, her hand within his. The girl—yes, he remembered now, but still very indistinctly. But soon with a great ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... all such filth retreat, Go delve and ditch, in wet or dry, Turn groom, give horse and mule their meat, If you've no clerkly skill to ply; You'll gain enough, with husbandry, But—sow hempseed and such wild grasses, And where goes all you take thereby? - 'Tis all to taverns ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... {56} Cease, Labour, to dig and to delve; All hail to this tenth of October, One thousand eight hundred and twelve! {57} Ha! whom do my peepers remark? 'Tis Hebe with Jupiter's jug; O no, 'tis the pride of the Park, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... a little peasant—she must sweep, and spin, and dig, and delve, to get daily her bit of black bread,—but that night she was as happy as a little princess in a fairy tale; happy in her playmates, in her flowers, in her sixteen years, in her red shoes, in her silver ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence—apart from the cooperation of all the other ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... darkness, desolation and gloom of dingy, malodorous factories and streets, where ragged, hopeless beggars-for-work delve and curse, to the glorious sunlight and balmy air of the "Land of Flowers." Here we see pretty vine-clad cottages embowered in orange groves, and surrounded by luxuriant harvests of everything to make life worth the living. Here we see the murderous villains of the Boston ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... days; and the time will come when they will realize it. Tell them to bend in thankfulness over the midnight lamp, to smile at their ceaseless work and call it pleasure. I can but kneel in fancy by the distant graves of my children; they are all gone. Could I but have them beside me now, I would delve like a slave for them; I would think no burden too hard, no denial beyond my strength, if I might but labour for their good and be rewarded by ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... predict; it is rather like a tree, shooting out branches which adapt themselves to the new aspects of the sky towards which they climb, and roots which contort themselves among the strange strata of the earth into which they delve. To us who breathe only the spirit of our own age, and know only the characteristics of contemporary thought, it is as impossible to predict the general tone of the science of the future as it is to anticipate the particular discoveries which ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... purpose to attempt a detailed history of the Rogue River war as that task were better left to the historian with leisure to delve into the musty records of the past, but I sincerely hope that when the true story of that bloody time is written the kernel of truth will be sifted from the mass of chaff by which it has thus far been obscured. My purpose is merely to give the facts in a general way as I received them, and the conditions ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... Tramping with boots thickly clayed From brown field or furrow, or lowered at last In our special six-feet by the sexton up-cast, We smack of the earth, till we earthy have grown, Like the mound that Death gives us—best friend—for our own. We tramp it, we delve it, we plough it, this soil, And a grave is the final reward of our toil. Attached? The attachment of love is one thing, The attachment of profit another. Gurth's ring Is our form of attachment at bottom, Sir, still, And to favour that bond HODGE doubts not your good ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... were, the people feasted upon them all the same, and the office of preparing them was the most honourable. I'm not claiming to be a priest (I leave that to my respected brother); I claim my right in a new country, where Adam has to delve again, to be a butcher and a gentleman." All his words were ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to delve into the complexities of the Stanwix treaties, Professor Peter Marshall, says that there was no prolonged and close discussion about the running of the treaty line in Pennsylvania (the Tiadaghton question), no discussion in any way comparable ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... did not give notice. After I had helped her clean the kitchen and the pantry I noticed an expression of deepest pity overspreading her lumpy features. The expression became almost one of agony as she watched me roll out some noodles for soup, and delve into the sticky mysteries of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... printers stamp and publish them, hawkers cry them, judges expound them, juries weigh and measure them with offences, then executioners carry them into effect. The farmer hath already sown the hemp, the ropemaker hath twisted it; sawyers saw the timber, carpenters tack together the shell, grave-diggers delve the earth. And all this truly for ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... "It may be necessary to go back to New York to delve into that part of it before we get through, but ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... a frantic pursuit of knowledge. I returned to California and opened the books. While thus equipping myself to become a brain merchant, it was inevitable that I should delve into sociology. There I found, in a certain class of books, scientifically formulated, the simple sociological concepts I had already worked out for myself. Other and greater minds, before I was born, had worked out all that I had thought and a vast deal more. I discovered ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... leave us both to moan A kind tradition overthrown, And dawning promise once more dead In the pernicious lowlihead Of not aspiring to be fair. And what am I, that I should dare Dispute with God, who moulds one clay To honour and shame, and wills to pay With equal wages them that delve About His vines one hour ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... contents will be nearly invisible for dust? No. Much of what is going through the press on the subject of pottery will have its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... for e'er and aye, They delve for phantom shapes that ride Across their minds alone,—and they But mock the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... that he narrowly escaped drowning. This was probably the same miraculous power love employs in youth to laugh at locksmiths; it is the inherent wisdom of the passion deeper than our philosophy can delve; it warns at times, and then again it will save without warning, strangely leading us to the post ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... with a badge of crossed axes on their sleeves clear themselves a fairway and swiftly delve holes in the wall of the trench. We watch them sideways as ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... charms and comeliness and seemlihead and at the splendour and affluence he saw about him, when she said "Know, O King, that I am the Queen of this land and that all the troops thou hast seen, whether horse or foot, are women, there is no man amongst them; for in this our state the men delve and sow and ear and occupy themselves with the tillage of the earth and the building of towns and other mechanical crafts and useful arts, whilst the women govern and fill the great offices of state and bear arms." At this ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... on, singers! Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth! Work on, age after age, nothing is to be lost, It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use, When the materials are all prepared and ready, the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... in this wilderness all these years, thereby saving it from destruction, and warding off the conspiracy that would reduce you to beggary. For your sake only have I so guarded the secret of its wealth that no living soul suspects it. Even the men who delve in its depths know not the value of the material in which they toil, for I have not told them. Nor have I allowed an assay to be made of its smallest fragment; but I know its worth, its fabulous value, that will make the owner ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... by argument, blandishments, threats, force, or appeal to their sense of loyalty, it mattered not which, he would bring about its abandonment. But she wanted to fulfil that scheme, to be free of Bambatse, its immemorial ruins, its graveyard cave, and the ghoul, Jacob Meyer, who could delve among dead bones and in living hearts with equal skill and insight, and yet was unable to find the treasure that ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... of it," asserted Ferris. "It was no doubt organized for the sole purpose of bidding on this job. Probably when you delve into the matter you will discover the fine Italian hand of your ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... years of her existence and at least four different public schools without knowing anything about "sex hygiene." That married women had babies and that somehow these were due to the presence of men in the household was the limit of her sex knowledge. Beyond that it was not "nice" for a girl to delve, and Milly was very scrupulous about being "nice." Nice girls did not discuss such things. Once when she was fifteen a woman she knew had "gone to the bad" and Milly had been very curious about it, as she was later ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... this quarter of Paris he has an opportunity to recall a royal memory now somewhat dimmed by time, but still in evidence if one would delve deep. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... the Sierra of the Andes from Chili to the Isthmus of Panama. As Cornish men we should adopt the specialty of our province, and become miners. The Andes mountains will give us that opportunity, where, instead of gray tin, we may delve for yellow gold. What say ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... take all precautions. I ask questions; I delve into the history of every valuable thing offered me. But I admit that I have been misled once or twice, in spite of all I ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... Their undulating silks they closely furl. The pick-axe one as a commandress holds, While t'other at her awk'ness gently scolds. One puffs and sweats, the other mutters why Can't you promove your work so fast as I? Some dig, some delve, and others' hands do feel The little wagon's weight with single wheel. And lest some fainting-fits the weak surprize, They want no sack nor cakes, they ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... attempt to delve down into the mysterious depths of mind and matter which form the basis of this system. In the first place, it is an impossible task for an ordinary intelligence; then, again, it were labor lost, for even if one did get ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and therto dyke and delve, For Cristes sake, for every poure wight, Withouten hire, if ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... hope of liberty, their uncomfortable position could hardly have been endured by these fugitives. William had been compelled to dig and delve, to earn bread and butter, clothing and luxuries, houses and land, education and ease for H.B. Dickinson, of Richmond. William smarted frequently; but what could he do? Complaint from a slave was a crime of the deepest dye. So William dug away mutely, but continued to think, nevertheless. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... where it be practicable, should have a small plot of ground to cultivate, that he may dig and delve in, and make dirt-pies if he choose. Children now-a-days, unfortunately, are not allowed to soil their hands and their fine clothes. For my own part, I dislike such model children; let a child be natural—let him, as far as is possible, choose ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... superfluous; we shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and blend together all that old Time can give us bearing upon London. Street by street we shall delve and rake for illustrative story, despising no book, however humble, no pamphlet, however obscure, if it only throws some light on the celebrities of London, its topographical history, its manners and customs. Such is a brief summary ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... should note the date of, and should delve into the details of the accident; special note being made of the occurrence of laryngeal spasm, wheezing respiration heard by the patient or others (asthmatoid wheeze), fever, cough, pain, dyspnea, dysphagia, odynphagia, regurgitation, etc. The amount, character and odor of sputum are important. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... voice would not be drowned in the general clamour of the truth-mongers of the marketplace? And the tendency of the modern religious consciousness is to seek reality personally, to develop the latent faculties by which experience can be won, and to delve fearlessly into the hidden depth of the soul in search ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Quezox: It vomits me to gulp the morsel down Yet I thy hint, subservient, will obey. (Aside) (But wisdom whispers keep thy bolo sharp And his fifth rib, perchance, may feel its prick.) Francos: But Quezox, let us in the future delve, For time doth swiftly waft us to our port. Where I must Caesar's message loud proclaim And my strong obligation to you voice. Our noble functions must be so performed, That happy impress graves the rabble mind But thus to meet these vultures ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... the house was not of sufficient dimensions to hold all the goods that were carried in, and he made up his mind at the proper time to make a survey of the place and delve ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... then as the modern politico-social reality is itself subjected to criticism, as soon, therefore, as criticism raises itself to the height of truly human problems, it either finds itself outside the German status quo, or it would delve beneath the latter to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... dread of venturing once more upon the water that you held back so long?" I asked her, seeking rudely to delve into the secret ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... vitiated life yielded to a hopeful determination to yet retrieve past failure. The pride and fear which had balked the thought of self-destruction now served to fan the flame of fresh resolve. He dared not do any writing, it was true. But he could delve and study. And a thousand avenues opened to him through which he could serve his fellow-men. The papal instructions which his traveling companion, the Apostolic Delegate, had brought to the Bishop of Cartagena, evidently had sufficed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to impart much knowledge; but to put his pupil through a course of mental calisthenics, miscalled education. But even this is by no means to be despised. With mind strengthened by exercise, even in a desert, and lungs developed by football, the youth may be able to delve the harder for knowledge when happily released from the "gerund-grinder," to pray the more lustily to the immortal gods for understanding, which transmutes what were else base metal into ingots of fine gold. There was a time ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... grave quick, then, for I die to-morrow. Delve it one furlong fro' the kidney bean-sticks, Where I may dream she's goin' on precisely As she ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and all the others, and run off to some profound retreat, and study it all over, and reproduce it again with my own faculties. Oh, that I could read them with you! I almost begin to love the pain with which I delve after the thoughts presented in such a close ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... phenomena which the scalpel and the microscope can show? A something nameless, invisible, imponderable, yet seemingly omnipresent and omnipotent, retreating before them deeper and deeper, the deeper they delve: namely, the life which shapes and makes; that which the old schoolmen called "forma formativa," which they call vital force and what not—metaphors all, or rather counters to mark an unknown quantity, as if they should call it x or y. One ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley |
